


Shuichi and Kirie die

by NOT_Kirie_Goshima



Category: Uzumaki
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Chapter 18 Spoilers, F/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, Suicide, poor Shuichi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-17 23:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4685003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NOT_Kirie_Goshima/pseuds/NOT_Kirie_Goshima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirie is sucked into the row hosue along with Chie in Chapter 18. Shuichi commits suicide. I am Satan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shuichi and Kirie die

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In Which Shuichi Dies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4659057) by [NOT_Kirie_Goshima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NOT_Kirie_Goshima/pseuds/NOT_Kirie_Goshima). 



Building a spiral-shaped row house the size of a small town took more than ten years, with everybody doing the construction being all tangled up like a human hedgerow. So when Kirie, Shuichi, and Chie returned to Kurozu-Cho in what was to them only several hours, the row house was not entirely completed and they sometimes had to run  _through_ it as quickly as they could to avoid being sucked into the human hedgerow themselves.

They’d ran through plenty of openings at this point. But have you ever done something dangerous many times and thought you’d gotten used to it, then let your guard down, then ended up getting hurt? No doubt. And as used to dashing through openings in the row house as the trio thought they were, what was inevitably bound to happen at some point finally did: two were caught in the row house. 

Shuichi Saito had seen his fair share, perhaps more, of deaths. His parents, Azami, Sekino, Yamaguchi, that woman during the hurricane, plenty of people in the ruins of Kurozu-Cho before this row house was built, and, well, that was just in  _person_. In visions, he’d seen the whole town die. Eventually the smell of bodies and the sight of twisted limbs became an common one, and Shuichi thought he’d been desentitized, but not to these  _particular_ deaths.

Chie screamed, unable to move, and Kirie struggled and cried out, but the people in the row house and their resolve to keep building was stronger than either woman and they were pulled in, and almost immediately the row house was sealed completely and Shuichi was on his knees screaming and pounding against a wooden wall.

Maybe months (or technically years) ago, Shuichi could have broken down that wall by kicking it. But he was weak now, barely strong enough to stand, let alone break down a wall. Even so, he kept kicking the wall as if he hoped a miracle would happen and cause it to break, and Kirie and Chie wouldn’t be tangled up yet and they could get out of the row house and continue their trek towards Dragonfly Pond together in awkward silence.

Maybe months (or technically years) ago, Shuichi would have cared that literal thousands of people could hear him screaming ‘ _Kirie, Kirie, Kirie!_ ’ over and over again in a shaky voice racked with sobs. But those people were barely human anymore, and Kirie was  _in there_.  _Kirie_ was in there. Kirie. That was the only thing that mattered right now, because Kirie was the only thing that mattered to Shuichi and now she was locked inside a row house tangled up in a human hedgerow. Shuichi had no dignity, at least not without Kirie there. Thus, the act of screaming and crying until his throat burned was not in the slightest bit embarassing.

It was hard to mourn Chie when Kirie was also gone, and so it’s safe to say her name was never spoken again; the only person capable of speaking it was too busy murmuring the name Kirie to do so. It had been at least several hours since she’d been sucked in – Shuichi couldn’t bring himself to even think the word ‘died’ in such a context – and over all these hours Shuichi had just been lying there curled up in a ball on the ground chanting Kirie’s name like a mantra to replace his former chanting of  _mad…this town’s going mad…_

…Because without Kirie, it didn’t matter that the town was mad. 

***

After maybe six or seven hours had passed, a very sudden and rather disgusting sliding noise could be heard inside the row house. Like the human hedgerow was dragging itself along somewhere. But where? Ha. Seven hours ago, Shuichi would have cared. Instead, He was now desperately trying to think of ways he could kill himself. The row house was sealed completely now, so that wouldn’t work. Maybe there was a knife lying around somewhere? After all, this  _had_ been a town once. Towns had knives. 

Not caring that he was already winded, Shuichi stood up and ran. He fell over multiple times, becoming even more bruised and scraped than before, but eventually reached a deadfall; he foraged through it desperately to find a means of suicide. It didn’t have to be quick, or painless. It just had to  _work_.

Shuichi came by his weapon of self-destruction very quickly. A rather large nail. It was rusty and bent out of shape, but it was also big and sharp. 

“Please, i-if there’s any kind o-of deity out there, please l-let there be an afterlife,”

Shuichi sobbed, bracing himself. If there was an afterlife, he could see Kirie again.

His death was not a merciful one. He’d taken the nail and pushed the whole legnth of it into his own neck, screamed deafeningly from the pain, and crumpled to the ground in a heap, but not died quickly enough. Shuichi died like he’d lived the last several hours: curled up on the ground chanting ‘ _Kirie, Kirie._ ’ In his last moments, he did not see some kind of light; instead, he heard the terribly familiar voice of the Spiral cackling in his mind.

“Take…me…I-I don’t…care,”

He managed to croak.

A spiral. That was it, Shuichi was becoming a spiral. He could feel his tongue curling horribly, blocking his throat in its determination to become a spiral. It didn’t matter, because he was dying already anyway, but Shuichi had almost thought being contaminated by the Spiral wouldn’t be this painful. Y’know, considering how many thousands of people had enthusiastically thrown themselves head-first into the Spiral happily and screamed at him to join them. 

No. Instead, Shuichi heard every crack of his bones as they snapped into tiny pieces, and felt his skin and muscles stretching and tearing painfully as his body turned into a spiral like the rest of the town. It was only after what felt like centuries of this torture by spirals that Shuichi’s haert finally played its final beat, and he passed into the next life – assuming there was one.

***

This time, there was a light. A hearbreakingly beautiful one, such a stark contrast to everything Shuichi had seen in the past several months it made him burst into tears all over again – wait, wasn’t he dead?

“Shuichi? Don’t tell me you…oh,  _Shuichi_!”

Th-that was Kirie’s voice. Shuichi whirled around to face where the voice seemed to be coming from, only to be tackle over by what appeared to be Kirie. Wait, wasn’t she dead? She was crying too.

“There  _is_ a life after death, Shuichi, Chie’s here, everyone is. But how did  _you_ get here?”

“Kirie…”

***

This realm didn’t really seem like any kind of hell, or heaven, really. But definitely the afterlife. Shuichi was, predictably unable to stop crying for the first several hours. The whole Goshima family was here, Chie was here, Shuichi’s parents were here, goddamn  _Azami Kurotani_ was here, which really proved there was no hell. 

The way it seemed, the afterlife was basically just like normal life, but without spirals. Sekino, here, was her normal leaderlike self instead of the attention-crazed alpha she’d turned into in Kurozu-Cho, and she’d made amends with Kirie. Mitsuru Yamaguchi was annoying, still, but no longer harbored such a ridiculous obsession with Kirie; though Kirie still avoided him, of course. Azami Kurotani was here, and Shuichi had initially run away from her, though she’d gone back to being her former overly enthusiastic and rather kind self, and was most definitely  _not_ intent on raping Shuichi anymore. Albeit, it was still difficult for Shuichi not to run away. Yasuo Goshima was here, making pottery even after having  _died_ – but it was normal pottery, and he no longer considered spirals any kind of art. Mitsuo Goshima, Katayama, Tsumura, and Yokota were here, and they were human.

Perhaps the most tearful moment for Shuichi so far aside from finding out there  _was_ an afterlife, was finding his parents. Both completely sane. His mother had hair and intact fingers, and his father was  _not_ obsessed with spirals. They seemed to have (at least mostly) recovered from the Spiral obsession; after all, it had been over a decade for them.

As it was, the entire population of Kurozu-Cho was in the midst of perhaps the most denial Shuichi had ever seen. Nobody talked about spirals, nobody mentioned spirals, nobody said the word ‘spiral.’ Everyone was acting normal, and pretending nothing had ever happened; with the exception that at least thirty people, including Kirie, had come to Shuichi apologising for not believing him.

Everyone had at least tried to make amends and go on with their not-exactly-lives, except Mitsuru, who still jumped out at people shrieking and bragged about being the only person to ever actually physically come back to life. 

Shuichi and Kirie had just rolled their eyes and smiled.

“He’s almost less annoying, now that we’ve seen him as a zombie.”  
“Yeah…I didn’t know him before he died, but from what you’d told me, he was unbearable.”  
“He was. But hey. I prefer him like this, y’know?”  
“Ha! Yes, definitely.”  
“Shuichui, I know this is an obviously sensitive topic and all, but how exactly did  _you_ die?”

Shuichi looked down at the ground and sighed.

“It’s okay, it’s perfectly normal that you want to know, and…I meant to kill myself, really. I went back to that deadfall and stabbed my neck with a huge nail. But then I got contaminated by the Spiral.”

Kirie’s jaw metaphorically hit the floor.

“You  _what_?  _You_ got contaminated…y’know what? I’m just gonna stop interrogating you.”

With that, both Kirie and Shuichi fell silent.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, there was a large row house. Shaped like a spiral, the size of a small town, it could have comfortably fitten ten-thousand people and  _un_ comfortably fitted twice that. It was, or course, completely empty. And the floors, walls, and ceilings were coated with blood and various gore from the human hedgerow having been dragged slowly and painfully through it. Here and there, a couple bodies lingered that had been left behind.

One of these bodies, pressed against the wall, was that of a young woman. Her bones were crushed, her limbs elongated into spirals, her short ginger hair stained with blood. Just outside the wall she was against, there was another body, one that had never joined those in the row house. That of a young and extremely scrawny man, dressed in filthy tattered clothes, his glasses cracked and his body twisted into spirals as well.

So close, but only together again in death. Such is the way of the Spiral.


End file.
